big ideas for big knitting needles

Halfway into being 5 and 2, it feels like a year of transitions for Harper and Max. We're pretty much out of the baby years (a world without diapers, what?!) and Harper is about to start kindergarten in the fall. Max went from looking like this:

to this, in just a few short months.

I joke that he is basically a feral child because he is always covered in a combination of dirt, snot and food. And because we're in love with his curls, we stopped cutting his hair. So it's always a floppy mess.

He's also always going at full speed, but doesn't have much control. So he's covered in scrapes and bruises most of the time. He's had his share of fat lips and a bloody nose recently. But he just gets right back up and keeps going.

His personality bounces between being super sweet and screaming.

I remember Harper being extra adorable as a 2-year-old and he's starting to enter that phase. I am REALLY grateful to finally be past the stage where he just runs away from me at full speed into various kinds of oncoming danger. If we yell "red light!" he will stop now.

He's been going to the Clifbar daycare 3 days a week for most of the year, in the classroom next to Harper. The other two days he stays home with me.

Yes, we will take all the free Clif bars we can get!

This was NOT the plan for this year, so it has been a big adjustment. His more affordable daycare fell through, so we have pinched every penny we could to make it with this scenario until Harper starts kindergarten. At that point, I am hoping to transition out of working at my retail jobs and into more teaching classes and making things.

Not surprisingly, we have been sick all.the.time - including Max getting hand, foot and mouth disease — so that has added another layer of difficulty to this year.

I am grateful for Max's sunny personality, though. His teachers say he is super sweet and pretty compliant at school. He still takes 2-hour naps for me, and he sometimes falls asleep at the lunch table at school. He's just a pretty relaxed little dude - unless you tell him he can't watch something on TV!

He is absolutely Harper's little shadow. He copies everything she does (to her understandable annoyance) and follows her and her friends around at school.

As a result, he has started carrying a purse and wearing a lot of jewelry, which cracks me up.

They do play together sometimes. There is a LOT of fighting over toys and tattling on each other. I can't blame Harper for being mad sometimes because, as the older one, she has to put up with a lot of his immature behavior.

They've had a few melt-your-heart moments. Mostly with her trying to help him do something. We took them to the beach recently, and although Max was tentative at first, they both loved the water.

We also took them on a pretty good hike up Mt. Tamalpais, which we have been meaning to do for years. They both did really well with the physical part, and it was SO beautiful up there. But Harper fell a few times (she had the wrong shoes on) and so by the end she kept saying she never wanted to go on a hike again.

So we'll have to work on convincing her to do another hike, but I think in the long run it's good to expose them to the outdoors as much as possible.

We had a really fun time exploring this old building in Richmond called Winehaven. It's some kind of wine distribution center that looks like a castle and would make an amazing event venue. But it had kind of fallen into ruin, so the mayor is trying to bring it back. If you go up on the roof you get an amazing view of the bay and Marin.

Most of our outings still end with two kids passed out in the back seat! Mike's parents are coming in a couple of weeks and we are taking the whole family to Yosemite. So we'll see how they do with a longer trip with more car time (fingers crossed!).

Grammie came for a visit last month and she had such a good time bonding with Harper. I think Harper is finally old enough to show a real interest in a lot of different things, so they can play together in a whole new way.

Harper is in full-on princess mode most of the time now. It's a princess-Barbie-mermaid world. And even though I have an eyeroll for that stuff sometimes, I can also relate to it. I was a 5-year-old girl once. So I actually find it more fun to play with her now.

She wants to grow her hair long so she can have all kinds of pigtails and braids and such. I can't get enough of the little dash of freckles on her nose that comes out in the summer.

She did gymnastics at school and really liked it. We want to get her in swimming lessons this summer. She's starting to have more trepidation about doing things right, especially when it comes to sports. But I think once she starts something she gets into it.

She has constant questions about how the world works now. Which I both love and find exhausting. I can't be surprised that she's a curious person, though!

She doesn't seem worried about going to kindergarten, even though it will mean making a whole different friend group. She's scheduled to go to the school that's closest to our house, but at least so far I don't know anyone else who will be in her class. We've become good friends with the parents of some of her friends, so hopefully we can all still stay in touch.

They both sleep through the night unless there is something unusual going on. Like Max had a long stretch of waking up once, but I think it was because he was sick a few times. We had talked about putting them both in the same room, but ultimately decided not to. Harper actually goes to sleep about an hour earlier than Max, although I think that will change as they get older.

She's in a very silly phase. Lots of dancing and fart jokes and made-up songs.

They both had huge growth spurts recently where I had to clean out their clothes and go up a size. They don't have much baby chub left! I can't really tell if they will be tall as adults. And though it seems like they are losing their blond hair as they get older, we still get many, many comments on it! I guess it's because it's a noticeable thing for strangers to talk about? Anyway, I found this old photo of Mike and it totally proves where the hair comes from.

Next up for Max is potty training. We were actually going to do it over Memorial Day weekend, but we had 3 parties to go to, so it didn't seem like the right time. I think he is ready and I don't want to miss the window. We're planning to do the same method (Oh Crap potty training book) as we did with Harper, since it worked so well.

Harper has a big transition coming up, but she's always handled those well. I think we're the ones that will struggle with her becoming a school-age kid.

I know I will shed a few tears at her preschool graduation next week. I'm so proud and of her bravery and inspired by her on a daily basis!